Establishing Hotels.com as the premier destination for hotel bookings required a fresh and innovative strategy that naturally leveraged the existing and loyal audience of a similarly fun media partner. The understanding that sports is the leading content captivating the Hotels.com target audience was paramount in the selection of that partner. Enter Sportsnet, the #1 sports network across digital and TV offering reach and power.

Given the humorous nature of the Hotels.com brand icon Captain Obvious and that of the “Plays and Mis-Plays” show hosted by Jackie Redmond, the opportunity to collaborate, create buzz and appeal to Hotel.com’s target audience with just the right amount of obvious had formulated. The question became, just how much of the Captain was needed to truly resonate with viewers to build awareness and familiarity? That’s when Captain Obvious as a co-host became the heart of the strategy.

With Captain obvious on the front lines as the co-host, the WEEKLY show aired with Jackie Redmond welcoming guest star with great enthusiasm. Tag lines were written specifically with the programming in mind allowing for the addition of Jackie’s co-host to feel seamless and natural, all while elevating the Hotels.com brand in Canada. The Canadian relevance was further messaged by having Captain Obvious appear with Canadian iconic sports symbols (i.e. a Hockey Stick) to reinforce his connection.

In addition to “Plays and Misplays”, Hotels.com was the presenting sponsor of the “Plays of the Week” on “Tim & Sid” and “Gotta See It”. The majority of the airings were coordinated to air prior to or immediately following marquee events to ensure reach.

The program was extended through the social platforms and digital video hubs.

Through this custom built first- to-market content experience Captain Obvious was weaved into the entire season’s program, like never before delivering 1,750 minutes of integration.

An additional 223% total integrated airings, over the 10 month period delivered +23% versus estimated impressions (Ad2554) for the brand.

Within the social space, the sponsorship delivered over 2.8 million video views and nearly 19 million impressions (Facebook & Twitter).

Unaided awareness increased 8% and consideration increased 6% for Hotels.com per their Brain JuicerTM study. Taking this into consideration, the client added 20% to the budget in 2017 to strengthen the integrations and increase investment to a platform that was showing success against their key metric.